That's fine, but I think what I would find more convincing is an example of actual complicated program mocked up in this manner. I'm all for using toy examples

That's fine, but I think what I would find more convincing is an example of actual complicated program mocked up in this manner. I'm all for using toy examples to sketch out the basics, but if you're proposing a system to make software systems easier to understand, you should probably demonstrate it actually makes at least one software system easier to understand. I tried to do this with a JS library: http://glench.github.io/fuzzyset.js/ui/ http://glench.github.io/fuzzyset.js/ui/ It looks like since this paper the author(s?) have developed it further and built some real stuff. Here's a screenshot on their website: http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/folder-parrot.png http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/folder-parrot.png Is this an easier representation to read and understand? I'm not so sure.